


Sterilization

by MrProphet



Series: Demiurge [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 11:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10718895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Sterilization

_P7F-303_

"What do you make of this, Jack?" Daniel Jackson asked.

Jack O'Neill wandered over. "It's a wall," he declared, after a long, thoughtful pause.

Daniel sighed. "I mean the writing on the wall."

"Oh. That. It's writing."

"It's _Ancient_ writing, Jack," Daniel insisted. "I was wondering if you could tell me what it says."

"Isn't that your job?" Jack asked.

"Well, I've been working at it since this morning and it doesn't seem to make much sense," Daniel admitted. "I just figured that since you and Teal'c are, to all intents and purposes, the worlds foremost experts on the Ancient script, you might be able to…give me a few pointers."

"Look," Jack explained. "One of the reasons I never did anything with my degree was a little problem with retention. There's nothing wrong with my memory, per se, I can still name all the moons of Jupiter – circa 1994; the outermost one is Sinope – but I couldn't integrate an equation if my life depended on it and I lost most of that Latin stuff about a week after we cracked the time loop."

"Could you give it a go?" Daniel asked.

Jack shrugged and studied the wall. "Ah…Watch…Next time. It's like an Ancient TV sign-off."

"Are you sure that's what it says?" Daniel pressed.

Jack looked over at his friend's earnest face. Daniel had changed so much since the first time Jack had seen him, but one thing remained inflexible: his faith in his friends, however misplaced. He had had the same look when he was trying to teach Jack to read Ancient in the first place; that same expression of patient frustration that said so eloquently that he believed Jack could do it, in the face of all the evidence.

Faced with such confidence, Jack could not help but try to rise to the occasion. He turned back to the wall. "Okay, so the first part talks about watching; seeing…maybe guarding." Jack sneaked a look at Daniel to see if he was on the right lines, but Daniel's face was a blank slate.

"Uh-huh," Daniel said, in an encouraging, yet non-committal tone.

"Right, so…Watch; watching; watcher, perhaps. And then we have time. Next time, some time; no, wait: _all_ time. Yeah; I think that's it. This is the watcher of all time." He turned a challenging look on Daniel. "So that's mine; what've you got?"

"I had Sentinel of Infinity," Daniel replied, "but I think you've got something with 'time'."

"Any idea what it means?" Jack asked.

"That this is the Sentinel of All Time," Daniel replied. He looked across at Jack. "Not helping?"

"Not helping."

Daniel nodded. "I'll try the next bit."

"You do that."

Jack walked on, into the Ancient outpost. It was a low, round building with a tower at the far side from the arched door. A ring of columns surrounded the main building and the walls were decorated with friezes and the inscriptions that Daniel was translating. Inside the building, a cluster of monastic cells surrounded an open courtyard. At the base of the tower was an Ancient control console and display screen.

Major Sam Carter was working on this computer; her upper body was completely hidden inside the machine's housing as she attempted to reactivate its ancient circuits.

"Any luck?" Jack asked.

"It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the picture," Sam replied.

"Right."

"And the picture you're trying to make is a tangled mass of identical wires."

"I see."

"And none of the pieces fit together anyway."

"But the important thing is you haven't stopped thinking positive," Jack said.

"Sorry, Colonel," Sam said. "It's tricky though. I've studied a grand total of one Ancient computer and this is clearly of a different era. It's like trying to repair the ASCII White supercomputer armed only with a working knowledge of the PDP-11."

"If I stop asking you questions, or indeed speaking to you at all, will that stop this flow of similes?" Jack asked.

"Yes, Sir."

"Right."

Jack turned and walked back to the door. Daniel looked as though he was about to ask Jack's advice again and so Jack walked on and lifted his tac radio. "Hey, big guy; how's it looking down there."

" _The appearance of the area around the Stargate has not changed_ ," Teal'c assured him.

"Any threats?"

" _There are not._ "

"Anything interesting at all?"

" _Lieutenant Wilbraham of SG-2 believes that she has seen a transplanted bird called a passenger pigeon, that is extinct on Earth._ "

Jack paused, thoughtfully. " _Is_ that interesting?"

" _Lieutenant Wilbraham believes so_."

Jack shrugged. "I suppose Lieutenant Wilbraham herself might be deemed interesting by the casual observer," he allowed. In the silence that followed, he could picture Teal'c's eyebrow rising.

"Colonel!"

"I'll get back to you, buddy," he told Teal'c. "O'Neill out."

Jack turned and ran back into the outpost. Carter was standing in front of the computer; the screen was glowing.

"You did it!"

"Yes, Sir," Sam agreed. "I don't know what it does yet, but it's doing it."

"Ah…Jack; Sam."

Jack turned slowly to face Daniel. "Daniel," he said, slowly. "Why are you standing there with that 'oh no, don't tell me you've already done what I was about to tell you not to do' look on your face?"

"I was about to say," Daniel replied, "that we might want to hold off on activating the computer."

"Why?" Jack asked.

Daniel gathered his thoughts. "Well…" he began, but the computer interrupted him.

_Sentinel 2 active. Celestial alignment indicates inactive period of four thousand solar years. Please account for inactive period._

"Is that thing speaking English?" Jack asked.

"I'm not sure it's speaking at all," Sam replied. She stepped warily away and picked up her P90. "I think it's beaming the meaning directly into our brains."

"So, what is it?" Jack asked.

"It's the Sentinel of All Time," Daniel replied. "I've translated most of the tablet at the door; it's a sort of visitor greeting panel. Apparently this outpost was one of three bases of operations for the Temporal Realignment Group. As near as I can make out, this group were an authority established by the Ancients' ruling body to detect, prevent and repair interference in the flow of time by irresponsible time travellers. The artificial intelligence, the Sentinel of All Time, was designed to detect interference and assign agents to effect repairs. Unfortunately, it is also equipped to take executive action on its own initiative."

Jack thought for a moment. As usual, he had not really grasped one word in five, but the gist was clear. "Carter; shut it down."

Carter gave Jack a weak grin and pushed her hand towards the open panel. "Already tried," she assured him. The air rippled and her hand stopped. "Looks like it protects itself when active," she noted.

"Plan B," Jack suggested. He drew the zat from his hip.

"No, wait!" Sam and Daniel cried out, as one, but Jack had already fired. The zat pulse dissipated harmlessly across the computer's shield.

 _Unauthorised interference detected_ , the Sentinel announced. _Initiating emergency protocols_.

"Oh, whacko," Jack muttered. "Let's move out," he ordered. "Teal'c! Dial it up and get out of there. We're on our way."

A soft, pervasive warbling filled the air. _Alert!_ the Sentinel declared. _Temporal contamination detected. Temporal emergency, code-149. All operatives, please respond. Temporal contaminants detected in Sentinel Chamber._

"Temporal contaminant?" Jack asked, slighted.

"Well, we _are_ all time travellers, Colonel," Sam pointed out.

_No response from operatives. Activating quarantine shield. Summoning assistance from Sentinel 1._

Jack was in the lead and so it was his turn to walk straight into the invisible force field and rebound, painfully. "You have got to be kidding," he muttered. He put out his hand and, sure enough, there was an impenetrable barrier between the columns.

_Sentinel 1 is non-responsive. Summoning assistance from Sentinel 3._

"Carter," Jack said. "Can you shut down this shield?"

Sam made a quick pass with an EMF meter. "I think the shield is generated from the columns," she said. "If we can destroy one of the pillars we can break out."

Daniel walked over to one of the columns and reached out to touch its surface. The force field rippled between his fingers and the stone. "How would it be otherwise."

Jack went back to his radio. "Teal'c. I don't suppose that there's any chance that you've actually obeyed orders and left with SG-2?"

" _I was just about to step through the event horizon_ ," Teal'c lied.

"Well don't," Jack replied. "Get up here at the double; we need some urgent property damage."

" _I am on my way, O'Neill_."

_Sentinel 3 is non-responsive. Conclusion: Sentinel network has been neutralised by temporal insurgents._

"See, that's better than 'contaminant'," Jack admitted.

_Initialising total sterilisation procedures. Power building for sterilisation; full-power in ten minutes._

"I don't like the sound of that," Daniel said.

"I think even the best case scenario is pretty unpromising," Sam agreed.

"Teal'c!"

"I am here, O'Neill," Teal'c reported, somewhat redundantly, as he appeared on the path to the outpost, with a Jackhammer shotgun slung around his neck. "What do you wish me to damage?"

Jack stroked his chin, pensively. "All things considered," he mused, "I think…That pillar."

Teal'c nodded, donned a pair of ballistic glasses and released the safety catch on the Jackhammer. His team mates turned away as the weapon boomed, its massive sabot rounds shattering the stone, exposing the delicate, timeless mechanisms of the force field generators and then smashing them to glittering shards of metal and crystal.

The force field flickered and died.

"Go!" Jack ordered.

 

They ran hard. It had taken Teal'c about five minutes to reach the outpost from the Stargate and destroy the pillar and the return trip was slightly uphill. Teal'c ditched the Jackhammer and, while Jack and Sam still had their P90s slung across their chests, none of the others felt like stopping to collect their gear. Daniel fumbled for the release catches of his backpack, but could not work them properly without slowing down. He chose not to slow down.

They were within sight of the Gate when Daniel tripped.

"Go! Go!" Jack snapped, waving Sam and Teal'c past. "Dial that Gate up." He turned and ran back. He grabbed Daniel by the arm and pulled him to his feet.

Daniel ran. Jack ran.

Teal'c dialled the Gate and Sam tapped in her IDC while he reclaimed his staff weapon. She looked back to make sure that Jack and Daniel were following and then she and Teal'c stepped through the event horizon.

Daniel threw himself at the Stargate.

Jack turned for a moment at the event horizon and saw a great light blaze up from the Sentinel's tower and expand with unnerving speed.

*

Sam and Teal'c stepped out onto the Gateroom ramp at the SGC and turned to watch for their comrades. From his vantage point in the control room, General Hammond saw a bubble of light expand from the circumference of the Stargate, engulf both Major Carter and Teal'c, then burst with a slight 'ping'.

When the blue-white blob in the centre of his vision had faded through pink, Hammond could clearly see that the ramp was empty. Major Carter and Teal'c had utterly vanished.

 

Daniel was dimly aware of the stars streaking past him as he travelled, disembodied, through the wormhole. Suddenly, the stars were blotted out by a fierce light and Daniel felt himself spun about and ripped inside out.

 

Jack turned and stepped forward. He felt the light slam into his back like a physical wave and drive him into the Stargate.

*

After the light, each of the four members of SG-1 found themselves in darkness. They hung, suspended, for what felt like an eternity, before a pinprick of light appeared before them. They plunged towards that light, each of them somehow expecting it to grow larger, like the light at the end of a tunnel, but it did not. It remained a pinprick, even when they reached it and plunged through, feeling their bodies pounded, softened, stretched and wrenched through that tiny hole. The pain was excruciating, but the light beyond the hole was such a blessed relief after the seemingly endless darkness that it seemed a small price to pay.

*

Sam returned to consciousness to the sound of shouting voices; they sounded rather alarmed. The room around her blurred into focus. She realised with some surprise that she was still on her feet, having expected to be spat headlong out of the darkness, as was Teal'c. They were in a laboratory, surrounded by gurneys, gleaming surgical implements, huge, black batteries and heavily-insulated crocodile cables; it looked like the sort of place where her grandmother might have worked. There were also people, scientists in long, white lab coats, who were doing most of the shouting.

Sam could not make out what they were saying and it slowly dawned on her that they were shouting in German.

Then she looked around and saw something that made her blood run cold.

On the wall of the laboratory, where she might have expected to see a periodic table or an inspirational poster bearing the image of Albert Einstein, hung a banner in red, black and white. No fuzzy-haired, avuncular physicist adorned this hanging, indeed, Einstein would be making _no_ appearance here, for in the centre of the banner was an emblem that had been burned into her soul as the symbol of all that was evil.

It was the Nazi swastika.

*

Daniel found himself reconstituted rather violently in a wood. He reappeared in the world four feet from the ground and moving fast; the fall knocked the wind out of him and he rolled awkwardly across the forest floor until he hit a tree.

Lying battered among the bracken, he looked up. He was lying at the bottom of a hill and on top of the hill stood a castle.

"Huh?" he wondered.

*

Jack also found himself in a forest. The moon shone down, but under the trees it was dark. He had little time to take stock of his surroundings before the quiet of the night was broken by the sharp, brutal smack of a silence gunshot. A woman screamed, briefly, before her voice was muffled.

"Oh boy," Jack sighed. He broke into a wary jog and headed for the scream.


End file.
